Earrings and a ponytail.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

I cannot speak for Colorado Springs or the make up of most of Iowa. But I can tell you that in Illinois, there are little towns that are very homogeneous and are small farm towns and these are not very diverse areas. And if you use voting and politics as a guide, these places are very conservative in their values and in the way they vote and the policies they support. Not to suggest that anyone in those communities are all the same, but when Obama was running for the Senate (he was from a Chicago district in the Illinois legislature) he had to convince people that have never voted Democrat to vote for him. And I am not talking about military bases or membership being the main base of these communities. I also know many military people that are not are racial minorities are not politically conservative, at least in the way they claim to vote or look at issues of public policy. Military service is not the overriding factor for all those that are members. Serving in the military might be a factor, but it is certainly not the factor to how conservative they might be.

Peace

That's why I qualified by saying cities of a quarter million or more. I grew up in a small town in the middle of Iowa where the politics and social mores were very conservative. I went to college in Northwest Iowa, where the politics made my small home town look like San Francisco in comparison.

I wouldn't claim to say it's "the" factor in most cases. There are a lot of things that come into play, such as religious background, the politics of your parents, union membership, income and education level, etc.

I'm not saying there's a causal relationship between military service and conservative politics; but I am saying there's a definite correlation. I would guess there is some causal relation as well, but that's based purely on anecdotal evidence rather than statistical analysis so I won't go beyond speculation on that.

And with Obama, he benefited a great deal from some Republican scandals (at various levels of Illinois politics) shortly before and during his campaign that left him with a very politically weak opponent and a general Illini distaste for the GOP. This is not to say he wouldn't have won otherwise, I think he would have, but it woudn't have been the landslide it turned out to be.

And Steve's initial point was (unspoken as it may have been) regarding metropolitan areas. I highly doubt he was comparing the politics of San Diego to the politics of Orange City, Iowa. That would be like comparing apples to baseballs.